The Context

In Sanxingdui, it seems that the more artifacts were unearthed, the more questions were raised. Something invisible to the naked eye also caught attention. Silk proteins were found in one of the six newly discovered pits. Silk was probably originally only used in sacrificial rituals, not for clothing.  In addition, the life cycle of a silkworm starts with an egg and ends with a moth. For ancient C...

Ten nesting ivory balls make a big ball. On a fan, there are scenes of European courting couples. On another fan, Qing Dynasty officials are on the road with their entourage. There are porcelain tea sets with a Chinese floral design but with European-style gilt trim. All are delicate. All feature both Chinese and European tastes. These are some of the displays at a recent exhibition on Chinese exp...

Chinese parents invest a lot in English language education for their children. English is a major subject in China’s curriculum from primary schools to college. However,  Xu Jin （许进）, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body, recently proposed to remove English from the national college entrance exam. One of his reasons is that compute...

Recently Intel removed an online commercial by Yang Li, a controversial stand-up comedian. “Why do some men look so ordinary but are so self-confident (to judge women at will)?” “These are some of things Yang Li said in her shows in the past two years. Many angry men accused her of “instigating a confrontation between men and women.” They called for a boycott against Intel products. But Yang Li’s...

Weak, timid, low in self-esteem, dependent, no appetite for exploration or adventure: This is how some of China’s lawmakers are describing today’s Chinese teenage boys. During the annual Two Sessions in March 2020 and 2021, legislators and political advisors raised concerns about the “feminization” of teenage boys, which garnered lots of media and public attention. The Ministry of Education has si...

Wearing ancient Tang Dynasty-style dresses and make-up, 14 plump girls holding ancient musical instruments strike elegant and amusing poses. it is not a conventional dance in which skinny dancers show fancy, standard choreography.  The antiques shown on the stage set also attracted a lot of attention. There are special stories about the owners of the antiques over their life of thousands of years....

China’s economy grew by 2.3 percent year-on-year in 2020. But there is a big imbalance among regions. In the top 10 provinces in terms of total GDP in 2020, only two, Henan and Shandong, are in the north. In the top 10 cities, Beijing is the only northern one. By contrast, in early years of China’s reform and opening-up about 40 years ago, the north contributed more than the south to the national...

In ancient times, Chinese people had more fun on Lantern Festival than during first few days of Spring Festival, as it was also a time for relaxed social norms. Besides lantern displays, there were many options for amusement, such as variety shows, plays and lantern riddles. Women would mingle in the crowds for a chance to meet suitors. The carnival not only set the stage for romance, but also tro...

Louis XIV sent a six-member delegation to visit China. All were fellows of the French Academy of Sciences. Two of them, Joachim Bouvet and Gerbillon Jean Franois, met Emperor Kangxi and took the place of the elderly Verbiest as Kangxi’s science teacher and adviser. 15 French scientists came to China under the initiative of the two emperors. This means that the originally religious missions by Euro...

Ever since 1912 after the end of China’s last imperial dynasty in 1911, Chinese people have been celebrating the turn of two calendars: One is the Gregorian calendar on January 1, as most people around the world do, and the other on the first day of the lunar calendar. Chinese New Year’s Day changes annually according to the Gregorian calendar. Indeed, the lunar calendar we use today is also a res...

The xia that possess martial arts skills are called wuxia, “ wu” meaning “martial arts”. These fictional figures first appeared in a unique genre of literature from the Tang dynasty called “legend novels”. They usually feature youxia. Similar to the later ronin of feudal Japan, youxia are wandering warriors that travel the world and live by their own moral code. However, unlike the ronin, many pos...

On November 14, 2020, Stephen Ellison, the newly appointed British consul-general in Chongqing, was visiting a nearby tourist attraction when he saw a young woman drowning in the river. Without hesitation, he dived in and saved her life. The video clip of his brave action went viral and he received copious praise. He was presented with the Chongqing Special Award for Justice and Courage and 50,000...

For most of its history, China was not isolationist. For nearly 1,500 years up to the 14th century, China was a major trading nation. Maritime trade boomed during the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties from the early 12th century to late 14th century, making the Southern Song the wealthiest of all Chinese dynasties.  So why did China’s last two dynasties, the Ming and Qing, turn their backs on openn...

For most of time since the establishment of the Ming Dynasty in the second half of the 14th century till the early 1980s, trading with the rest of the world was banned or restricted in China. By contrast, right before Ming’s closed door policy, China had already been involved in an enormous maritime trade for hundreds of years. And before it explored trade on the sea, its trade with Europe via Wes...

China’s total fertility rate has been below 2.1 for nearly three decades, the necessary number of children born to every woman to maintain current population levels. Families valued having children more in ancient China than today. As a Chinese saying goes: “emperors love their eldest son most, while ordinary people love their youngest son most.”  In addition, The link between prosperity and popul...

Anything in today’s toolbox for care for the elderly can be found in ancient China.  The question is how old was regarded as old enough to be entitled to State-guaranteed elderly care measures.  The consensus among researchers is that a typical family consisted of about five members since the Warring States period between the 5th and 3rd centuries. It was not as big as people think.  Imperial rule...

 No other scholar in China’s history has had such a deep influence on popular culture as Su Dongpo, one of the brightest stars in the vast galaxy of China’s literary past. Indeed, if you only have time to learn about one ancient Chinese scholar, Su Shi is the right choice. Why is he loved so much? He was both admired and hated in his time.  But for about 1,000 years, Su’s attitude toward life has...

The anticipated listing and the unexpected suspension put the microloan business of Alibaba's fintech arm Ant Group in the media spotlight. Chinese people seem to have long impressed the world for their preference for saving. Their enthusiasm for borrowing is apparently a new phenomenon. But did ancient Chinese borrow? If they did, how?  Why was the "square hole the big brother" so...

Do people travel just because they got rich enough to afford a trip? “The world is so big, and I want to look at it,” says  a middle school teacher from Central China’s Henan Province, in her letter of resignation in 2015.  “A person has to be impulsive twice in their life: to fall head over heals in love and to go on a trip without any hesitation,”said another popular online post in 2016. So do w...

A group of young women in Shanghai  group-bought luxury bags and booking rooms at five-star hotels just to take photos and pass them off as their own purchases on their WeChat feeds. Netizens mocked them as “fake socialites. Young men are doing something similar. A more humble bragging is, for example, complaining the new Lamborghini  your husband gifted to you is "too ugly." The girl wh...

To a large extent, food supply shaped the development of the world’s early civilizations, including those in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and India. In China, food security was a matter of dynastic survival.  Geographic isolation and human influence on nature were decisive factors in the flourishing of Chinese civilization and shaping of Chinese politics.

 There was a lot of imagination in narratives on rural areas in ancient China. For thousands of years, rural villages have existed. Why would they need to be a part of anyone’s imagination? The 2,000-year plus stable centralized imperial system in China underlies the tradition of focusing on imperial rulers and institutions in historical research.  The vague picture and difficult academic research...

“Tragic family of origin”, a term taken from family counseling, has become a hashtag in recent years after stories of conflict between parents and children, either real or depicted in TV and film, shocked the public. Some blame traditional views on education, which prioritize academic success and give rigid authority to teachers and parents. This criticism, however, is possibly a misinterpretation...

The UK replaced the US as the favorite intended destination of Chinese students in 2019, and the gap was even wider in 2020 due to the tension between China and the US.  About 150 years ago, the US was the first country in the world to receive the first government-funded students from China. Their average age was 12. They were sent by the imperial Qing government under an initiative promoted by th...

Today Japan is the host country of the second largest group of Chinese students abroad, second to the US. Japan hosted the largest number of Chinese students abroad between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Japan used to a student of China. How did it become a teacher of China? Some of the Chinese students, either funded by the imperial Qing government or by themselves, became the major...